W.H. ends practice of re-enacting

The White House has announced it will end the controversial practice of re-enacting part of presidential speeches for the sake of still photographers, after drawing criticism for doing it for President Barack Obama’s historic speech announcing the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Journalists and free speech advocates generally cheered the move, although it is not yet clear what the new arrangement for photographing presidential speeches will be.

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“We have concluded that this arrangement is a bad idea,” Obama spokesman Josh Earnest told POLITICO, adding that the administration is open to working out some new arrangement with photographers.

The practice has been used for decades to avoid distracting presidents with shutter noise and jostling photographers while they are giving important addresses to the country. Following a speech, presidents often read a passage of it aloud again to give a lifelike re-enactment for photographers.

The practice violates most mainstream news organizations’ ethical rules against re-enacting photographs, but has long been seen as one of the aspects of flexibility required to cover a president.

But the practice sparked controversy when it was used on May 1, following the president’s dramatic late-night speech on bin Laden. When he had finished speaking, five photographers were brought into the room to take photos of the president reading a few lines from his speech. Several news organizations, including Reuters and the AP, made it clear in their captions that the shots they took were taken after the speech.

“As President Obama continued his nine-minute address in front of just one main network camera, the photographers were held outside the room by staff and asked to remain completely silent,” he wrote. “Once Obama was off the air, we were escorted in front of that TelePrompTer and the President then re-enacted the walk-out and first 30 seconds of the statement for us.”

That prompted questions about the practice in the journalism community, with Al Tomkpins at the Poynter Institute interviewing an array of current and former White House photographers for an in-depth report about the practice. They said it was standard, if unpopular, practice, but Tompkins pointed out that it flew in the face of the professional ethical standards for photojournalists.